When I started writing this blog three years ago, the internet landscape and my place in it was very different. Facebook wasn’t trying to imitate Twitter, Twitter wouldn’t let you post images or videos, and I had the time and the inclination to post 1,600 word comment pieces every Monday for the viewing pleasure of 50-100 people.
By contrast, my post in January, about Peter Reynolds’ impersonation of a journalist, was republished on Politics UK and read (I’m told), by about 10,000 people. My article on the practicalities of cannabis regulation was published in Weed World, a magazine with a readership of 140,000.
I find myself reluctant to spend three hours writing a good, thought-through post just for my personal website after achieving numbers like that. That’s why I have only posted two or three times this year, despite discovering last year on a silent retreat, where I was not allowed reading or writing materials, that I cannot go more than four days before sneaking off to the toilets with a verboten pen and paper to covertly jot down some words.
However, for all the things I hate about Facebook Timeline, the ability to post more than a sentence about what I “is” doing has not only borne a thousand arguments, but also given me the practice of writing short, sharp posts that I wouldn’t publish in a magazine, but maybe somewhere smaller – like a blog.
I was thinking the other day about perhaps starting a Tumblr to put posts that were less polished than my blog but longer than a Facebook status, and then I smacked myself round the face and thought, “That’s ridiculous, Sarah, it’s your blog. Just change the way you post to it”.
So this is it. I’ll keep posting the longer stuff I find myself writing (such as my monthly piece for Lesbilicious), but I’m now giving myself permission to blog more often, more informally and generally with greater abandon, and I am going to see how it works out. I hope that you enjoy the result (and that I do indeed manage to update the blog more often now I’ve been all melodramatic about it).
To close, here is a picture of a kitten I know.
Otto the cat chills out on a box
Related Posts:
{ 2 comments }
